The case for a Reagan dime
By Bruce Walker
web posted June 14, 2004
The death of President Reagan, the greatest person in the last
fifty years except for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, reminds us of
many things. His death reminds us that wisdom is not superficial
complexity. His death reminds us that marriages based upon love
transcend calamity. His death reminds us that global wars can be
won with little blood if the champion of freedom has will, candor
and compassion.
Inevitably, Leftists consider FDR a "great president." Reagan
was much greater in every way. As we remember Reagan, let us
now begin to put his genuine greatness - second only, perhaps,
to George Washington, in American history - into perspective.
The pigmy Left will nip at his toenails until he his mortal body is
dust. Conservatives and other normal people should simply
thank God for Reagan.
Both Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan took office in the
middle of terrible economic problems. Reagan had America in
the middle of the longest period of economic growth in its history
when he ran for reelection. FDR had America in an even deeper
Depression when he ran for reelection in 1936.
Ronald Reagan, whose absence of any prejudice or bigotry was
legendary, appointed Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman, to
the Supreme Court. He groomed brilliant black people like Alan
Keyes and Colin Powell into leadership roles, rather than
appointing black flacks and hacks.
Franklin Roosevelt did appoint the first woman to the cabinet,
but his record on civil rights was abominable. He appointed Tom
Clark, who had joined the Ku Klux Klan, to be Attorney
General of the United States. He appointed Hugo Black, who
had also joined the Ku Klux Klan, to the United States Supreme
Court. His first running mate, Nance Garner, hailed from a town
in which blacks were not even allowed to live. How bad was
FDR on civil rights? Consider that even the black Marxist
W.E.B. Dubois did not vote for FDR after the 1932 election.
Prosperity and civil liberties were both slam dunks: Reagan was
vastly superior to Roosevelt. What about the really big question
both men faced? What about the evil empires each man faced
and the question of war and of peace, of freedom and of
tyranny, of safety and of democide?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office and Adolph Hitler took
office at almost the same time. FDR had overwhelming majorities
in Congress, and those majorities would grow. Moreover, FDR
thoroughly grasped how to use radio and film. As many people
have noted, FDR, like Ronald Reagan, was a "Great
Communicator." So what did he communicate? Not much.
FDR had six and a half years from his inauguration to stop the
Second World War, prevent the Holocaust, and bring hope and
freedom to Europe and the Orient. He commanded almost as a
dictator the most powerful economy on the planet. He had
enormous leverage over England and France, because of their
heavy war debts. He also was initially viewed favorably by both
Hitler and Mussolini. He had his so-called "Brain Trust" to advise
him. How does FDR stack up against Ronald Reagan in
confronting global evil? Not well at all.
Franklin Roosevelt confronted an enemy which scarcely had the
power to harm a single inch of American territory, while the
Gipper defeated an enemy with the power to destroy mankind in
a matter of minutes or to confront the American Navy with a
reasonable prospect of success or to overrun Western Europe in
a few days.
The Gipper defeated an enemy who was the darling of the Left.
He defeated an enemy which was constantly being compared as
morally equivalent to the United States, despite the fact long
before the Holocaust, this enemy instructed Rudolph Hess,
during his visit to the Soviet Union, how to cram families into box
cars and how to exterminate millions of human beings.
Franklin Roosevelt defeated an enemy who was the demon of
the Left, though Nazism itself was pure Leftism, and whom the
moguls of Hollywood rightly portrayed as savage brutes with
bad intentions for humanity. There were many films before the
Second World War began which told America in stark terms
how bad the Nazis were. Other than Red Dawn, were there any
films from Hollywood which showed the evil of the Soviet
empire?
The Gipper defeated an enemy who had a militant, ugly army of
Storm Troopers operating within America, their swastikas
morphed into other icons of the radical Leftism which is Nazism,
Marxism, Fascism and other movements based upon hate. He
did so without arresting these people or suspending their civil
rights.
Franklin Roosevelt interned Italians, Japanese and German
citizens because of their ancestry. He funding blatant propaganda
funded with tax dollars. His Democrat Congress created the
House Committee on Un-American Activities to investigate pro-
Nazi and pro-Fascist movements in America. He trampled upon
our liberties, rather than persuade us, about the evil of Nazism.
The Gipper defeated an enemy who had so demoralized its
geographically logical victims that West Germany, Italy, France,
Holland and Belgium had to be begged by America to allow us
to defend them. Other nations, like Sweden and India, were
vicious and unfair critics of America even though they, too,
would be consumed by the Russian Bear. The first liberation of
people from Communism, Grenada, was by order of President
Reagan. No more peoples or lands fell to Communism while he
was president.
Franklin Roosevelt was begged by Europeans and Chinese to
help them stop Nazism, Japanese Imperialism, Soviet aggression
and Fascism. He did not need to persuade them of the evils they
confronted or beg them to be allowed to help them. Franklin
Roosevelt allowed Germany to occupy the Rhineland, to annex
Austria, to acquire the Sudetenland, to grab Bohemia and
Moravia and finally to incorporate Memel into the Reich, all by
steel fisted diplomacy from an enemy which had a military which
could barely harm a single inch of American soil.
The Gipper came into office at a time when the Gulag was still
very much alive. Mothers and children were still being sent to the
Gulag, where the mortality rate for children was fifty percent per
year. The blood of the Killing Fields, the genocide that continued
unchecked during the morally numb years of Carter, was still
fresh and warm.
But Reagan championed the cause of enslaved people without
hesitation or qualification. He went to Berlin, not to empathize as
JFK did, but to demand in the name of humanity that the new,
improved Communist tear down the Wall. He armed the
Afghans to fight against a Red Army which was systematically
exterminating the Afghan people. Men like Eichman and
Yamashita cringed when Ronald Reagan was president.
What about FDR? Do we assume that the millions murdered by
Stalin were "unpersons" as many historians have done? Did FDR
ever raise even a peep of protest about these starved, tortured
and killed mothers and children? Did he even know about this
holocaust? If so, he had a funny way of demonstrating that
knowledge: FDR opened diplomatic relations with a government
that committed a holocaust while it was committing that
holocaust.
The Final Solution to the Gipsy Question was constructed in
1938, four years before its infamous Jewish parallel, and before
the Second World War in Europe began. Where, exactly, was
Franklin Roosevelt when this happened?
Between September 1939 and June 1941, one and one half
million Polish mothers, babies, old people and fathers were
crammed into airless, dark, filthy cattle cars and transported to
the Gulag camps deep in the heart of Siberia. Did FDR ever
whisper "That is evil"?
Ronald Reagan was not just a great president, but a great moral
force in our times. Franklin Roosevelt was a nebish, a frat brat, a
Clinton. Why not now recognize these two paramount facts?
Why not a Reagan dime?
Bruce Walker is a senior writer with Enter Stage Right. He is
also a frequent contributor to The Pragmatist and The Common
Conservative.
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com